Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer, based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in Genetics

 

Male preference for women’s permanently swollen globular breasts [see JJ Rousseau] is somewhat anomalous, but to date, no widely accepted evolutionary explanation has been offered. What is the latest in this titillating area of research?

Science has always been concerned with the big questions. How did we get here? How did the universe begin? What is the nature of reality? And now, the scientific method has turned its dispassionate gaze towards that eternal and pressing question: Why do men like women’s breasts? 

‘’Because they do’’ or ‘’because they’re nice’’ are not acceptable answers here. Neither, for that matter, is ‘’because media portrayals brainwash them into liking breasts’’ (if you believe this, have a conversation with any straight man). In science we must seek always to be disinterested and unbiased, and to apply the principles of discovery as rigorously as we can. That is how a recent column in Psychology Today by Robert D. Martin, a distinguished anthropologist, treated this topic. So let us examine the evidence, and please, let us have no giggling or smart comments from the back of the room. 

Breastology

Although the reason for breasts’ existence is obviously breast-feeding, women’s capacity for milk production is not associated with breast size (at least not before pregnancy). Furthermore, there has been no clear association between hormone levels and breast size. So why have men evolved to like them?

An early hypothesis was that breasts are an honest signal of fat reserves, which would come in handy during lean times for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. If that were true, however, men should find breasts no more erotic than fat elsewhere on the body. Chalk that one off. 

One of the most popular theories has to do with pair-bonding. Neurology studies have proven that women are flooded with oxytocin, the bonding hormone, when their nipples are stimulated by a nursing baby, or indeed by a sexual partner. So, men who pay extra attention to this will impress their mate, and make it more likely that she will have his babies. Make of this theory what you will – it seems to suggest an unlikely degree of unselfishness in men – but there may be something to the bonding aspect. 

Switching positions

One person who thinks bonding plays a part is British anthropologist Edward Dutton; he has suggested that breasts evolved to resemble buttocks. Seeing as our distant ancestors mated from behind, like our primate cousins, at some point they must have switched to face-to-face. This moment in evolutionary history was hugely important, because with front-facing intercourse came sustained and intense eye-contact theretofore absent from the act of procreation. 

Much has been speculated about the profound anthropological changes face-to-face sex may have brought on the human species, not least the new depths of pair-bonding it must have triggered. Dutton thinks that one of the byproducts of the change may have been that female breasts expanded so as to create a cleavage reminiscent of the previously all-important backside. 

How old are you?

Possibly the most intriguing argument is that of evolutionary psychologist Frank Marlowe. His ‘nubility hypothesis’ proposes that full, pert breasts are an honest signal of youth, and therefore fertility. In the ancestral environment, humans often went without clothing on their torsos, meaning the females’ breasts would have been more on show. Before birth records and possibly even before the advent of language, there was no way to know the age of other adult humans, except by visual physiological signals. 

As women age their breasts begin to sag due to the pull of gravity. Therefore, fleshy lumps on females’ chests became one fool-proof way for males to know the rough age of females, even if it was subconscious. Over aeons of time and thousands of generations, those men with an internal urge to mate with women with younger breasts would on average have had greater reproductive success, seeing as they were mating with younger (but adult) women. 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/478797-men-breasts-evolutionary-biology/

 

 

And men like Bill Clinton, blah blah blah...

 

 

See also:

 

Pre-colonial communities’ history of gender fluidity

Some people in Western cultures say that gender is binary and divided into male and female, and that gender fluidity is a recent phenomenon. But this isn’t the case everywhere.

In Indian, Native American and Aboriginal cultures gender is more fluid and has been for centuries. 

The BBC’s Gender and Identity correspondent, Megha Mohan, has been speaking to young people from these communities, who are taking to social media in new ways, to educate people about how gender identity is viewed in their culture. 

Reporter: Megha Mohan, Video Journalist: Olivia Le Poidevin, BBC Minute

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-53573764/pre-colonial-communities-history-of-gender-fluidity

 

 

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Debbie Hayton is a teacher and a transgender campaigner, based in the UK. She tweets @DebbieHayton

A new book, Irreversible Damage, reveals how teenage girls are being duped into believing they want to be male, and are pushed into taking puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and undergoing double mastectomies.

Whether it is a statement or a question, the title of this book conveys the necessary urgency of this desperately sad story. Amid the trans debate, seemingly a battle between grown adults, vulnerable children are prey to a malevolent ideology that survivors call a cult.

In a superb piece of investigative journalism, Abigail Shrier focusses on teenage girls – most with no history of gender dysphoria – who become captivated by the belief that they are transgender. Behind the glittery exterior portrayed in the media, she encounters damaged children – many alienated from their families – in poor mental health and facing the prospect of infertility and medication for life.

Shrier, a writer with the Wall Street Journal, pulls no punches when describing phalloplasty, the construction of an artificial penis. The complications can be horrific. She reports the experience of one nineteen-year-old, “whose phalloplasty resulted in gangrene and loss of the appendage.” On the cusp of adulthood, that young person has been left without normal genitalia, for either sex, and tethered to a catheter.

I am a transgender person, but I transitioned as an adult when I could understand the implications on my body and my relationship with society. Besides, by then I’d had my own children. Yet children too young to even give consent for a tattoo are being corralled into making truly life-changing decisions.

Whether you agree or disagree with her, this is a book that needs to be read. Shrier’s informed analysis flows from dozens of interviews, including medical experts and parents. From Dr Kenneth Zucker, who oversaw the writing of the medical definition of “gender dysphoria,” to ordinary families whose children seem to them to have been swept along by this cult, Shrier talks directly to those with first-hand experience.

The facts are clear: there is a contagion spreading among teenage girls who suddenly believe themselves to be boys. While there is documented history of young feminine boys expressing a desire to be girls, never before have girls dominated the work of paediatric gender clinics. The statistics are staggering. In the UK, for example, referrals of teenage girls rose by 4400% in the last decade.

Shrier interviewed Lisa Littman, an American doctor who conducted an observational study and found that nearly 70 percent of the teenagers belonged to a peer group in which at least one friend had also come out as transgender. In some groups, most of the friends had done so. Transgender identification was encouraged and intensified by friends and social media and, astonishingly, appeared to precede the experience of gender dysphoria itself.

Shrier explores possible reasons why these daughters, often from liberal progressive households, want to be sons. First, social media where children are influenced by strangers while their parents are kept in the dark. Second, the educational system where adults who ought to know better have been enthralled, or threatened, by transgender activists. Ignoring both science and basic safeguarding, they have bought into the notion that we all have an immutable gender identity which may or may not match our sex.

With overwhelming folly, children are being transitioned in their schools with new names and pronouns. If their parents might be unsupportive, then they are not told, in case their children might feel “unsafe.” But this is something all parents need to know: this phenomenon is catching, and to be forewarned is to be forearmed.

But nothing could have happened without the cooperation of policy makers, and not only within the education system. Therapists – the very people who should be helping children to challenge their thinking – have been blindly affirming whatever their young patients have picked up from the internet.

Anyone who has stood against this has faced censure and condemnation. But as Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano explained, “This idea that a kid’s going to come in and tell us that they’re trans and that within a session or two or three or four, that we’re going to say, ‘Yep, you’re trans. Let me write you the letter.’ That’s not therapy.”

Even the medical profession itself has been found wanting. Eminent sexologist Dr Ray Blanchard told Shrier that “I can’t think of any branch of medicine outside of cosmetic surgery where the patient makes the diagnosis and prescribes the treatment.” While the zealots who actually believe that children can change their sex are perhaps in a minority, those professionals who remain silent in education, therapy and medicine are complicit in this unfolding scandal.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/496511-radical-transgender-mental-health/

 

 

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My name is Jules Letambour and I wish to add to the debate of "genderalisation" of our society by first making you listen to a piece by Debussy of a 17th century poem by Tristan L’Hermite called “Le promenoir des deux amants”.

As usual, the English translations are somewhat way off the mark. And the poem, sung by Veronique Dietschy with Emmanuel Strosser at the piano, has been truncated by most publishers and surprisingly, by Debussy himself, who dedicated the music to his wife, Emma. 


Of note, is the last four verses, absent from most versions, including Debussy’s.



Translated/interpreted, these last verses would be in English:


Climène, this kiss makes me drunk, 
With this second kiss, I am in a trance.
If I don’t die from the third one,
I don’t deserve to live.


Jazz, Pop and Blues music rarely reach this level of intense simplicity… Even Debussy seems to have avoid it...

Jules.

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From Mrs Brown Scrapbook:

 

 

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Public toilet expert creates blueprint for how Australia can improve loo management

Australia's 19,000 public toilets are built and managed by councils, private property owners and developers, but one loo expert believes they should be managed by a single government entity instead.

Key points:

• A Queensland researcher has developed a set of principles to guide public toilet design
• A Churchill Fellowship grant allowed Katherine Webber to study public loo design globally
• Her findings have now been shared with policy-makers in Canberra

Social planning researcher Katherine Webber last week spent time in Canberra telling federal policy-makers how the nation's public toilets could — and should – be better.

The Churchill Fellowship recipient said her 2018 grant allowed her to embark on a global tour to study how other countries managed public loos.

From this Ms Webber developed a proposed set of guiding principles for public toilet design and function in Australia.

"Everyone out there's a toilet enthusiast; everyone's got a public toilet story that they are willing or unwilling to share," she told ABC Radio Brisbane.

Her travels took her to Berlin, where a citywide audit resulted in a public-private partnership to add more automated toilets, tackling gaps in the toilet network.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-28/public-toilet-guidelines-so-australia-can-improve-loo-management/100028866

 

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!